Songs In Which The Artist "Name-Drops" Their Earlier Works

King Krule does this a lot. References to "(baby) blue" and the "lizard state" in more than a few of his tunes.

I usually take this as a sign the well is starting to run dry.

Mott The Hoople: "Drivin' Sister" ("...Eight-Track machine playin' "Half Moon Bay"...")

Camper Van Beethoven sampled/quoted themselves a lot - not quite the same phenom but I always liked it. "She Divines Water" has a piece of "Surprise Truck" in the coda. One of the songs on their second album was the vocals from "Ambiguity Song" flown in backwards over new music. "Eye of Fatima Pt 1" quotes "cowboys on acid" from the backing vocals of "Peace and Love". I think there were a few other instances but it's been years since I listened to those Pitch-A-Tent records so I can't remember.

The Hold Steady do this constantly

It was song number three on John's last CD
"I'm going to make it through this year if it kills me"
And it almost killed me

Double-whammy there with the Mountain Goats record

*Mountain Goats reference

Love: "Laughing Stock" ("I keep on singing my song - I just got out my little red...")

Spoon, "They Want My Soul":

"Jonathan Fisk still wants my soul"

I'd say half of the Gaslight Anthem's songs reference the other half.

"When you hear 'Across The Sea'/I hope you will think well of me" - the last song on the last Salem 66 album.

The Ramones' "7-11:" "We went down to the record swap/The kids were dancin' to the Blitzkrieg Bop."

Buddy Holly -- Peggy Sue Got Married

every rap act ever

Felt in C86 favourite "Ballad Of The Band":
"All those songs like Crystal Ball, Dismnatled King, you know I loved them all."

and again in 'Declaration':

I will be the first person in history to die of boredom and I will have as my epitaph the second line of 'Black Ship In The Harbour'

Iggy Pop Dum Dum Boys?

Super Furry Animals - "Keep the Cosmic Trigger Happy"

I know the doorman at the Hippo Club
(He's called Paul)
He let us in for free to hear the dub
(He engineered us once on a track called "Don't Be A Fool, Billy")
We drank a double at the upstairs bar
(On Fierce Panda Records)
Then headed downstairs coz it's better by far

Is there an actual song called Elastic Man that Mark E Smith references people coming up to him and asking 'How He Wrote....' or is it all meta?

he's in character there.

Beatles, "Glass Onion" duh

Fifth post in thread.

" i was living in London with the girl from the song before.. " Paul Simon / The Late Great Johnny Ace. presumably he's talking about Kathy his g/f who features in a bunch of his 60s songs.

Leonard Cohen, "you got me singing"

I think Peter Hammill references the VDGG song, "Refugees" in two later songs, but I can't remember what they are at the moment.

Definitely in the Van der Graaf song, "Man-Erg":

"I'm just a man, and killers, angels, all are these,
dictators, saviours, refugees in war and peace"

... not that obvious written down but it is if you hear him sing it (I suppose 'killers' is a reference to the song, "Killer", now I come to think of it)

the beach boys. worst offender is peak mike love "brian's back," though there's also "do it again" (pretty nice), and i think a few others? makes sense for a band whose first nostalgia tour cash-in dates back to the early '70s.

bright eyes did it pretty tastefully, iirc, on the lead single from the people's key. there's a verse where he weaves in the imagery of every bright eyes album cover, chronologically.

weezer do it to disgusting effect on last year's "back to the shack" single, which is imo their single most egregious transgression of all.

anyway yeah, am i right that this is a thing typically done poorly?

oh yeah TI definitely did this shittily at some point or another, i think on "big shit poppin?"

peter hammill's "easy to slip away" is a direct follow-up to "refugees".

stevolende: it's meta, but when kahimi karie mentions "how i wrote elastic girl" in "good morning world" she's referring to an actual song of hers called "elastic girl" (as well as of course to MES).

The Who, two from Quadrophenia: "The Punk and the Godfather" quotes "My Generation," and "Sea and Sand" quotes the High Numbers' "I'm the Face."

doesn't "helpless dancer" end by quoting "the kids are alright"?

Hm, kind of...it segues into the original recording of TKAA, but I didn't think of that bit as part of "Helpless Dancer" necessarily.

The Jefferson Airplane's "The House at Pooneil Corners" sort of counts, but the reference to "The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil" is limited to the title, I think, and isn't found in the lyrics.

convinced that Talking Heads must have done this but for the life of me i'm not .. sure.

Sloan, in "400 Metres":
"Now you know about the people of the skyyyyyy!"

(c.f. their song "People of the Sky".)

smog in teenage spaceship

blondie's 'dreaming" has the lyrics "fade away, radiate" which refer back to that thing.

Queen's Fat Bottomed Girls/Bicycle Race might be the winner here, as each song from the single references the other side.